Footwear construction typically relies on the manipulation of flat materials into three-dimension shapes in order to form a footwear article. Cloth, leather, or other materials may be cut and sewn or otherwise attached and wrapped around a foot form to create a desired shape for the article, such as a footwear upper.
The Inventors have recognized several drawbacks with this traditional approach. For example, the material used to construct the upper may have only limited degrees of freedom in terms of flexibility, thereby limiting the ways in which the upper conforms to a wearer's foot and reducing comfort. As a result, even after the footwear is worn for a considerable amount of time, it may still not fully conform to the actual contours of the wearer's foot.
To at least partially address the above issues, the inventors herein have taken alternative approaches to footwear construction. In one example, a footwear article may include a looped upper with fibers or cords formed into a structure. In one example, the cords in the upper may be in slippable engagement with respect to one another and may be engaged at interfaces with an anchor cord. The anchor cord may be positioned at the upper away from and parallel to a sole of the footwear article. In this way, the cord structure can be tensioned independent of other upper materials, thereby enabling a more precise fit and increased functionality of the cord structure. Furthermore, a method for constructing the footwear article is simplified as the cord structure is anchored to the upper rather than directly to the sole.